MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS

The world has its heroes and heroines, holding them up for our admiring gaze. But does the world want us to notice Christians, say, like Bible-believing missionaries, does the world choose to elevate them in the public eye? I don't think so.

No, missionaries are vilified in both books and movies. James Michener's "Hawaii" portrays the American missionary Abner Hale as rigid, unlikable and pathetic. If you hated Abner Hale, then the director of the movie succeeded in bringing James Michener's character to the screen.

In the book, "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," the author writes about two planes, "which cast their shadows on an Indian tribe in the Amazon jungle. One plane brings the drunken bush pilots Wolfie and Moon, to be hired by a tinpot jungle general to bomb the Indians. The other brings earnest missionaries from North America, to preach their religion to the tribe. In the author's world, both of these aircraft are machines bearing destruction." (Roger Ebert)  

Do they make movies in praise of a believer who endures hardship and perseveres against overwhelming odds and does great deeds, paints great works of art, writes beautiful music, builds hospitals, or discovers vaccines to save millions? You know the answer to that question.

Who are those the world system elevates and applauds? Its own.

HELEN KELLER

Let's take Helen Keller. What schoolboy was not raised on the heroism of Helen Keller who overcame the debilitating effects of such terrible disabilities? Why, the Motion Picture Academy made a film about her life and awarded its leading actresses the coveted Oscar. Before that, the movie was a Broadway play. People loved both the movie and the play.

But, could we be curious for a moment and ask, "Why, of all the people who've overcome severe disabilities, and she did,why did the world choose Helen Keller as the one to chisel onto the Mount Rushmore of our minds? Maybe the following had something to do with it.

WHO WAS HELEN KELLER?

"There is no getting around this, but Helen Keller was a communist or at the very least a hardcore socialist. She spoke out against nuclear bombs, poverty, and capitalism—very actively and very frequently. She published dozens of articles on these matters, and passionately spoke out in public against anything that bothered her morally, politically speaking. So much so that she was on an FBI list of prominent people they needed to keep an eye on." So wrote Larry Knipfing in May, 2012.

She thought the Russian Revolution of 1917, which brought the communists to power was a good thing for Russia and the world. Workers Power, a revolutionary communist organization founded in Britain in 1976 is high on its praise of Helen Keller. In an article dated February 26, 2015, Workers Power said:

"When the First World war came to an end and the workers took power in Russia, Keller backed the revolution enthusiastically, and fought to rally opposition to the imperialist powers’ blockade of the Soviet Republic.

"On the death of Lenin, she pointed out that the lessons of the Russian Revolution are key to humanity’s future:

“I see the furrow Lenin left sown with the unshatterable seed of a new life for mankind, and cast deep below the rolling tides of storm and lightning, mighty crops for the ages to reap.”

How did that harvest out? It worked out so well, the communists had to build a wall to keep people inside.

Even though many Christian charitable organizations are named after Helen Keller, we have to ask, was Helen Keller a Christian? After you read the following, you decide:

One author writes, "She was an ardent follower of the Universalism of Emanuel Swedenborg, a mystic born in 1688. Swendenborg's view of the atonement was heretical because he taught: "It is a fundamental error on the part of the church to believe that the passion on the cross was the real act of redemption.

 "She read the Bible, but accepted and denied its teachings as she saw fit. One of the doctrines that most revolted her was that of Hell. In her book My Religion, Helen says, 'I had been told by narrow people that all who were not Christians would be punished, and naturally my soul revolted, since I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in the pagan lands …'  She was a free thinker and based her religious beliefs on her own readings and experiences."

She was a relativist ("I knew of wonderful men who had lived and died for truth as they saw it in pagan lands.") She believed herself to be the arbiter of all truth (she "accepted and denied [the Bible's] teachings as she saw fit.").

Helen Keller's beliefs are in the world's wheel house, so of course the world promotes Helen Keller; she was one of their own and the world loves its own. The world especially likes her idea that "God is the God of all faiths." This sounds like a denial of John 14:6, doesn't it? By that statement, she declared Jesus' claim, "I am the way, the truth and the life," unfit for her universalist sensibilities.

THE MAHATMA

In 1983, world couldn't give enough awards to "Gandhi," the "biographical" (I use the word loosely) movie about Mahatma Gandhi. It won just about every statuette the world had to offer. (I didn't see it; I went to the barber shop to watch them give haircuts.)

Biographical? There were some crucial facets of Gandhi's life the film omitted, as Jonah Goldberg reminds us. Gandhi's first hunger strike against the British was in protest against the English effort to grant greater freedoms and rights to the Untouchables, India's lowest class and most oppressed class. That wouldn't play well with Gandhi's hero status, so Richard Attenborough, the director of the movie, left it out.

Gandhi had no idea of the real world, a fallen world as seen by his dogma of non-violence. During WWII, He called for the British to surrender to the Nazis. He lectured them, "Let the Nazis take possession of your beautiful land with your many beautiful island with your beautiful buildings."

His admonitions to the Jews were so wrong-headed as to laughable, even, dare we say it, crazy, admonitions such as when he told them to commit mass suicide. Could his reasoning have been based on the fact that he considered himself a friend of Hitler and had no use for a Jewish state?

What should the Jews in Germany do? Gandhi's advice was to stand up in peaceful protest against the Nazis, use civil disobedience as the weapon of choice, and thereby commit the mass suicide he advocated. This was a thinker, a moral leader? This is someone with the moral authority to advise the West whose heritage is Christianity? This is someone to whom we should listen? Get real.

Even after the war when people learned of Germany's Final Solution, Gandhi refused to admit that he was wrong. He said that the Jews should have offered themselves to Hitler's knife and should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. This is wisdom? This sounds like a Klansman.

By these pronouncements we see the end result of refusing to accept the first three chapters of the book of Genesis which describe the reality of the Fall of man. Gandhi rejected the fall of man and became naive to the point of being a dangerous fool. Yet he's held up to us of rhe West as a font of wisdom.

The world's heroes? They're the rhinestone cowboys. No thanks. My heroes have always been real cowboys. I'll stick with "Gene and Tex, and Roy, and Rex," and throw in Paladin, Marshall Dillon, and Lash LaRue while you're at it.
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.

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Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

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